Saturday, October 14, 2006

Since I couldn’t sleep well, I ended up getting up pretty early. When language lessons were canceled, Shannon and I decided to act upon our sudden craving for pancakes, so we looked up a recipe online and started making them. At some point, however, we realized that the “pancakes” were started to seems very suspicious like they might just become crepes instead. With alarm, I checked the recipe once again and though it did say it was for “basic pancakes” I realized that I’d made the mistake of getting the recipe from a British site. Well, this was definitely a considerable disappointment, but we made it through somehow. At this point the rest of the girls had gone to do several activities that we either couldn’t do or didn’t need to do, but they’d left us with the responsibility of getting some ingredients for Sunday dinner. I was noooot feeling well, the whole morning, but I was used to it by then. At 4ish we headed over to the Villa where the missionaries were showing a missionary video and where we were to meet up with Christina and Raluca who were going to shop with us. It turned out that pretty much everyone but Melissa, Megan and Jessica were there, so we all went shopping together. But when we were still at the Villa I got an incredible blessing from Elder Dubling. Church is true! The city, by the way, was AMAZINGLY packed. The street across from the Palat, with all the souvenir booths, though not officially closed off to cars, had nevertheless been invaded by people simply because it could not be avoided and even then it was crowded. Finding what I needed was difficult because everything had changed since the time I went before and because of the huge crowd. We often lost each other for periods of time. Unfortunately I also missed out on the great traditional Romanian souvenirs over closer to the Palace because I didn’t realize they’d close when the concert started. Well, we finished shopping and then talked for a while, then we decided to go back to the apartment (and go pee) real quick before the fireworks started. It was Shannon, Christina, Raluca, Marina, Rebecca, Dave and I at this point and we all made a chain to cut through the thick throb of people and we danced as we wove through it. After a quick stop at the apartment, the group separated and Shannon, Christina, Raluca and I went back to watch the fireworks while Marina, Rebecca and Dave tried to go to the Piazza and get food first. The fireworks were fabulous and I had, yet again, one of those “I’m in Eastern Europe” moments. It was just fun to be on this amazingly crowded street watching fireworks in front of a Palace with two Romanian girls. After the fireworks were over I was totally ready to go home, but Shannon wanted to stop and go to the piazza for the experience. I did noooot want to go and we ended up not going.